I booked two tickets to New York in November with British Airways but needed to change them.

I went onto the BA website, as the airline urges us to do, to alter the dates.

The price quoted on the website is £240 however the transaction keeps timing out. I then find out, after spending 90 minutes on the phone that in fact, the actual cost to change both tickets is £646.

I totally understand I would need to pay to change an air ticket but can British Airways be allowed to publish one fare on its website and force customers, in reality, to pay a far higher fee?

I have alerted BA to the issue, they admit they are wrong, the information is incorrect and despite my sticking the problem on a blog for the world (and staff at British Airways to see) the airline simply shuts its ears and seems absolutely unwilling to correct the information.

I think you are doing sterling work in highlighting a specific instance which will strike a cord with many who have been subjected to the classic corporate stonewall tactic. For BA to try and bat this away as an isolated one-off is insulting in the extreme. It exemplifies the culture of frontline staff having no discretion at all to put obvious wrongs right, and which culture imposes as a default position of the customer being at fault.

VKI am astonished by your lack of insight; easy to confuse anger and frustration, I suppose, but it is evident that BA have dropped a big one here, and their inability to recognise it is simply toe-curling. Referring folk to a book on Amazon is not worth the time it takes to write the piece.

BA needs to learn some basic lessons about CRM; hopefully this will be another clumsy step forwars.

Bucksnet, he was including the multiple entries that a single booking can make onto BA.com, hence his inclusion of “Of the average 250,000 bookings [including check ins, seat requests and MMB upgrades]”. I think if I am reading him right, it would have been better to say “of the average 250,000 logins to BA.com every day”.

There’s a balance to be appreciated here, VK makes a good point that in general BA’s booking system works well considering the number of transactions undertaken however when something goes wrong blaming the customer is never the right step. I have been telling my staff for 20 years, If we get it wrong

Admit itApologisePut it rightFollow up to ensure all ok

However if we are right

ApologiseExplain why we are not at faultHelp the customer solve the problemFollow up to ensure all ok

RobertC – Good post.Take things that VK says with a pinch of salt. As a self appointed BA eminence grise on this site his default position is to support BA regardless.As you are now not perceived as an unequivocal BA supporter you will join a group which he will constantly snipe at – it is what he does.